


and if we are children, then we are heirs

by Xue_Lang



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: All Over Again, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Growing Up, Loss, Once a King or Queen of Narnia Always a King or Queen of Narnia, The Problem of Susan, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xue_Lang/pseuds/Xue_Lang
Summary: Susan stays.(Canon divergence post-Prince Caspian)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 68





	and if we are children, then we are heirs

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a riff on the Bible’s Romans 8:17 verse, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God, and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” 
> 
> Inspired by [dirgewithoutmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic)'s various takes on the Problem of Susan.

The Pevensie children were, after all, entirely British.

Susan did not think about what it meant that four British children could tumble out of a wardrobe and ascend instantly as rulers of a new world. She was happy that her subjects were happy, and that was enough for her. And if she started considering these things after she and her siblings followed the white stag back into dreary old England, well, what did it matter?

It was not as if democracy and suffrage were concepts that their animal subjects would have understood.

It was not as if Susan could go back and ask.

It was not as if she could change anything.

(In another world, she would have given almost anything to change it. Anything except her family. The Lion could be cruel in his love.)

Then, two years later, she fell through another rabbit hole, a long yawning tunnel, and between one breath and the next she was back on pristine beaches under a clear blue sky, sand slipping between her toes. Hardly able to believe it, she stumbled after her brothers and sister, laughing by the glittering water, climbing up the rocky outcrop they knew so well.

And there, standing in the remains of Cair Paravel, in the ruined heart of her kingdom, Susan breathed in the crisp sharp air and knew that she was home.

No one would take her from her home ever again.

Susan may be queen no longer, may never again walk the hallowed halls of her castle, but she had always been true to the peoples she served. After all, it is the call of her Horn that the deep magic answered to. It is her instrument that recognised Caspian’s need, and warped reality itself to open a door for their return. So she descends into that dusty, vine-covered basement, hefts her bow and quiver out of its chest, and makes ready to defend this land she loves.

And when the dust settles, when the Telmarines have been washed back to the sea from whence they came and victory has been declared, Susan lowers her weapon of war and turns away to let a triumphant Caspian claim the throne. Her blood still runs hot and her heart pounds with the high of battle fervour.

She barely eats at the victory feast. Susan looks down at her shaking hands and her head starts spinning - not from blood loss or adrenaline, but with Aslan’s revelation that this is her last time in Narnia.

That night, in the rooms they gave her in Caspian’s newly reclaimed castle, Susan turns over in bed and thinks.

Each time she'd left this place, left her _home_ , the Lion had orchestrated her departure. He had told them about the white stag. He had created the gateway back to England. He had taken her and Peter aside, as he had so often done in the early days of their old reign, but this time he spoke not of matters of state, but about faith, trust, the echo of his glorious presence that reverberates across worlds, that they must search for. He spoke of doorways closing, and growing old in linear time, and how he determined the worlds you are meant for.

Susan thinks and thinks and thinks, and when dawn begins to light the horizon, she rises from bed with resolve held close in her chest.

When the old oak twists and opens its trunk, shows her that cluttered, smoky tube station with its student masses hurrying onto trains, Susan says, “Wait.”

The crowd turns to look at her, and she looks back.

She looks at the doorway, looks at her siblings, looks at her people. Looks at Caspian, straight-backed and ready to lead. Looks toward the winding river, where it leads out to sea and the rocky outcrop of her castle, all ruins now, only stone and moss where she used to stand and see all her land.

Susan looks at the halved trunk of that great tree, and remembers that first, crushing moment of realisation when she fell out of the Spare Oom wardrobe and turned to find blank polished wood where she expected the light of a lantern to lead her home.

Aslan can rise from the dead and wake dryads at a touch and breathe strength into little girls. But the deep magic is older than Aslan, and it still needs her to give of herself willingly, still needs her to be brave enough to take that step back into her world on her own.

Susan looks into the Lion's great golden eyes, and hears the echo of his declaration when she was crowned, two years ago, a thousand years ago, a lifetime ago.

_Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia._

And finally she finds the courage to say, "I'm staying."

* * *

Who last refused the Lion?

She knows what they say about her, the peoples whom she stayed for.

Susan the Faithless, they call her. Susan Silvertongue, in whispers behind her back.

Peter had not stayed. He, the Magnificent, could not understand Susan's choice, could not comprehend a duty to the land that did not carry the weight of the Lion's blessing.

Lucy did not stay, either. Her valiant little sister, growing up the second time round, had never needed to be physically in Narnia. Lucy lives Narnia every moment of every day, one foot in each world, and she sings to the trees in England and the dryads in Narnia without a blink of difference. Lucy's soul has always been part of Narnia, as Narnia is a part of her. She did not need to be here to know that someday another door would open, and she would find her way home again. In this, Susan kept faith - and years later, she was vindicated when the Dawn Treader swept into port, battered and weary, bearing a triumphant Lucy and reformed Eustace at its head.

Edmund was the only one who came to her, who offered her a last embrace farewell. Susan knew, as Edmund did, that they would not see each other again for many long years. She clung tight to him, soaking in his warmth and steady grip. Alone of her three siblings, Edmund understood the weight of penance and personal responsibility.

* * *

In this world, as in every world, Susan is not faithless.

She has no nylons and lipsticks, but she has face paint made from the berries near the beavers' den, and jewellery gifted to her by lords asking for her hand. She has flowing dresses and two different laughs: a small, tinkling chuckle for the nobles and the council, and a loud, full-bellied bark of laughter whenever someone truly makes her happy. She still experiments with her face paint till she gets it right. She still learns all the dances at court and the veiled way of speaking one thing but implying another. She still practices her archery. Her aim, whether applying a curve of eyeliner on her face or sighting down a distant target, is steady and true.

In this world, as in every world, these things are her armour and her weapons, not her betrayal or her punishment.

She talks Caspian into letting a representative from each animal species sit on a council, reassures him that he still holds executive power. She ventures forth into the woods and talks to the animals, asks if she could facilitate the making of treaties between Caspian's court and their woodland holds. It is not quite democracy, but no one has absolute power through an accident of birth, not any more.

Susan starts withdrawing from court life soon after Caspian stabilised his hold on power. The implication that she pulls the strings behind his throne is not lost on her, and she is quick to eliminate the rumours that the king is in thrall to her, an ancient queen marched right out of legend.

Caspian tries to propose marriage, as a young nobleman does to a beautiful lady revered by his people who just helped him secure his throne. Susan gently turns him down and advises him to look west, beyond Narnia to lands where he may hope to make a fruitful alliance. He takes the rejection with grace and more than a hint of relief, and makes her an ambassador of his court, free to travel where she pleased.

Newly created as an official ambassador, Susan bids Caspian farewell and departs on her travels. She has a fine horse and provisions enough for months, and a letter bearing Caspian's seal of approval for when she has to exercise the power of the king for local problems. She does not look back at Caspian's Telmarine castle, so different in shape and staff from her own.

Susan follows the great river, walking the line of the riverbank beneath the canopy of forest trees, radiant with joy as dryads scatter flowers in her path. She walks old paths and new, tracing over the journeys that she and her siblings made once upon a time. Sometimes it seems as if she is a stranger in a stranger's land. Susan learns the new terrains and contours of her kingdom (she would always think of it as hers, the weight of her crown and duty a shared burden), the rivers and hills that had sprung up as time passed. She meets with the descendants of animals who used to be her advisors and friends, who welcome her eagerly into their homes and give her sweetmeats and trace their lineage for her. She makes new friends in them and in families she had not known before, creatures who arrived in Narnia after she was long gone.

Susan could never faded into obscurity, gone into retirement to spend her days quietly in the Narnian countryside. In a different world, estranged and apparently indifferent to her siblings’ adult Narnian obsession, Susan would numbly receive a phone call in the early morning about a train crash and being the last surviving Pevensie in that world. She would have unfinished pamphlets on her desk and books scattered around her room, and she would have had to miss the suffragette march next weekend to bury her family. In a different world, Susan would throw herself into protest movements in an attempt to escape the reality of her family’s deaths. She would not know for years to come that they had entered Aslan’s Country and were living in Narnia always. Sometimes, she could not stop her hands from shaking when the phone rang.

In this world, Susan too has chosen not to follow her siblings. Here her path has also diverged from theirs. She has lived in Narnia more years than any of them, and she does not know how differently time moves between the worlds: whether she has aged quicker than Peter and Edmund and Lucy, or whether they have become grown men and woman while she was away. She wonders what they told the parents, the school, her friends. She decides it is not in her control and not to be worried over, not when she has to sort out a disagreement between a prominent deer family and the chief rabbit the next day, not when she knows in her bones that she would make this choice again.

* * *

There comes a day when something tugs at Susan, quietly insistent, until she follows its call. It leads her along the river until she comes through a gap-toothed cavern on the western shore, the sting of saltwater sea on her lips.

She looks up at her castle (she would never stop thinking of it as hers), at how time has eaten away at it, and lets the wash of loss submerge her a moment. Then she breathes out, rolls up her sleeves, and begins the hike up the lonely hill to Cair Paravel.

It is overcast and the wind howls in her ears, but she pulls her cloak tighter around her and keeps climbing. The call is stronger now, clearer, and she diverts off the well-trodden road to the main entrance to come round a small ledge, the mouth of an old and forgotten escape route from the castle above. There is the swish of a tail, and Aslan emerges, silent and unknowable, his great golden eyes fixed on her.

Susan stills, and then sinks into a curtsey. Whatever else he is, Aslan is still the wise and powerful Lion, and Susan had known this day would come.

She thought she had more time.

"Rise," Aslan says, and his voice reverberates through Susan's bones. She senses the Lion pace to a stop in front of her, and she unfolds out of the curtsey to meet his gaze. "Well met, my daughter."

"Greetings, Aslan. I hope the years have been kind to you," she says evenly.

Aslan huffs a quiet laugh. "They are as they do. I am pleased to see that you have allowed Caspian and his men to take what is now his, by right of time."

"Narnia will always be first in my consideration. It is far past the time when four kings and queens can sit as one on the throne," Susan says.

"You have done well, my daughter," Aslan says. "I wished for you to return to your world, but it seems you have reshaped yourself into the Narnia of today. It was not the path I intended for you, but your time has not been wasted."

"Narnia will always be first in my consideration," Susan repeats.

The weight of Aslan's gaze on her seems to grow heavier. "Yes, I can see that," He inclines his head, voice growing thoughtful, "Someday, Narnia may no longer be here, and you may wish to go elsewhere. The horizon has an end."

A slow trickle of foreboding goes down Susan's spine. She turns the Lion's words over in her mind. Then she takes a steadying breath.

"That is in the future, and I cannot tell what is to come," Susan says, "but while I am here, and hale, and alive, I have a duty to my kingdom. Aslan, I have outgrown the world you think I belong to. And had I not, I do not believe we cannot keep changing and reshaping ourselves to our homes. I have fought to learn Narnia as it is. Whatever becomes of it in the future, at least I have done this much, now. There are animals and humans now who I have helped. I do not dare presume I have done good always, but I do not believe the work was wasted. I will not—I _do not_ —regret this."

The Lion pads forward and paces in a slow circle around her, searching. Susan forces her body to be still, to maintain an archer's poise, to not tremble as her instinct fights for flight in the face of his judgement.

The Lion's awesome power has fragmented in her heart ever since she had been told to leave her kingdom, and now Susan sees the Lion in his godlike whole, and she finds that she has little room to tolerate that divine presence while the vines and lives of her kingdom grow in the spaces of her heart.

Aslan pauses in front of her again and simply looks at Susan for a long moment. Lion to Queen. Finally, he dips his great mane to her, and she barely holds back her start of surprise.

"The deep magic is not without sacrifice," Aslan says softly, "there will come a time when all the worlds have to reckon with that."

Susan nods, and she does not think it is her imagination that sees a glimmer of respect in his eyes. Then Aslan turns and departs, walking away down the cliff and across the sands.

Susan climbs down and sits watching the sun sink into the horizon, long after the waves have washed away the last traces of the Lion's steps. She thinks about all that passed between them, the words heard but unsaid. She thinks about the Lion sprawled on the slab after Jadis stabbed him, Father Christmas pressing the Horn into her hands, the sense of rightness when she refused to walk through that gateway to a dusty shelled-out world. She thinks about subjects who had passed long ago, and friends who are alive today and waiting. She thinks about how the deep magic gives and takes in equal measure.

Slowly, Susan gathers the fragments of her life (her twice over lives) close, tucking them away. She will bide her time; she will not forget the Lion's warning. Her devotion to Narnia is like the river, restless and ever-shifting: its path may twist and change and double back on itself, but it all ends the same. She puts her back to the shining sea and starts the long walk up into the forest.

There is still work ahead, and Susan will see it done.

**Author's Note:**

> rip all my tenses
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this rambling piece about my queen Susan! This has been languishing in my drafts for a long time and I have finally finished it (kind of)
> 
> I have just come back to writing after years of hiatus and am only doing what sparks joy at the moment. I love reacts and comments and kudos and thoughts. I know I am far from a perfect writer, however I am NOT accepting constructive criticism or anything which is about bettering my craft rather than simply having fun. I ask that you please respect this in all my fic.


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